WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Our Precious Demon King ◈
Chapter 7: You're My Uncle?
──────
He'd implanted a Mind Slime.
It couldn't control Director Park Taejun like a puppet, but it could certainly restrict the director's actions.
To be precise, it was a ticking time bomb that would keep the director from trying anything stupid.
“Ugh, shall we get out of here?”
As he stepped into the hallway, armed soldiers pointed their guns at him. There was no need for him to deal with these small fry himself.
“Remi.”
Whoosh.
The moment Remi, the military veteran schoolgirl swordswoman, was summoned, she surveyed the area and asked,
“Shall I cut them down?”
“No, don't kill them. Just clear a path.”
“Yes.”
Ratatatat, ting-ting, kaboom!
Neither the soldiers with their guns nor the hunters hastily dispatched from standby were any match for Remi.
“Uuuuuugh.”
All Remi left behind were sliced-up guns and wounded soldiers sprawled on the floor, groaning.
“Heh, that should've gotten the message across, right?”
Killing them all would be easier.
Still, going out of his way to show mercy sent them a message.
I'm generous.
Surely they'd get it now?
“That's piling up at a frightening rate.”
<‘Incitement to Violence’ is added to the Scales of Chaos.>
<‘Destruction of Facilities’ is added to the Scales of Chaos.>
Small black beads were raining down.
“I wonder what rewards the black beads will give me?”
He was actually looking forward to it.
Perhaps because he'd strengthened the balance beam, the scales were handling the imbalance despite the mound of black beads.
He walked past the devastated guard post.
Outside the headquarters, there was nothing but an empty road. The whole area was countryside.
“Hmm.”
This was a problem.
After he stood there for a moment, Remi came to stand beside him, having subdued all the soldiers nearby.
The military veteran schoolgirl's uniform was a mess of bullet holes.
“We'll need clothes, too.”
Whether it was getting clothes or reaching his sister's home, it looked like he'd have to get down this road lined with nothing but streetlights first.
“Go grab someone who's still in one piece.”
“Yes.”
Remi soon returned with a soldier.
“Eek!”
“You can drive, right?”
“Pardon?”
“Can't you drive?”
“I-I can.”
“Good. Bring me a car.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Gripped by fear, Sergeant Kim Sangsu hurried into the guard post's control room, fetched a key, and pressed the button.
Beep-beep.
A passenger car flashed its lights. They had a winner.
“Let's go.”
“W-where are we going?”
“To my sister's.”
“Where would that be?”
“I don't know. Ask your superior. You people must've looked into it.”
“Pardon? Oh, yes.”
Sergeant Kim Sangsu started the car and called the higher-ups.
“Yes, yes. I'm with him now. Yes. To his sister's home... Pardon? Yes, understood.”
“What'd they say?”
“They'll text me the address.”
“Knew they'd have it.”
He'd been planning to go back to Michuhol Police Station if they didn't know, but that saved him the trouble.
“What's your name?”
“Sergeant Kim Sangsu.”
“Right, Sangsu. What do you think of what I'm wearing?”
“You look great.”
“Are you fucking making fun of me?”
“N-no, sir.”
Was that not the answer he wanted?
“It l-looks like a hospital gown.”
“Right. And what about the girl sitting beside you?”
“She's b-beautiful.”
“Huh, would you look at this little shit?”
Kim Junyong chuckled at Kim Sangsu's reaction. Even the sergeant's cheeks had gone red.
Remi really was unrealistically beautiful.
‘Of course she is. She's a demon.’
It wasn't strange that Kim Sangsu had forgotten the situation and gotten so flustered.
“You'd really lose your mind if you saw an actual dream demon.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. Anyway, don't you want to buy that beautiful lady some clothes?”
<The scales detect ‘Intimidation’.>
Hey, don't butt in. Read the room.
“Buy us some clothes on the way.”
“Gah! Yes, sir.”
A sportswear store was open along the way, so they bought a few tracksuits.
His sister's home wasn't far from Gwacheon, where the Special Investigation Unit headquarters was located.
They reached the entrance to an apartment complex near Sadang Station.
“Thanks for the ride. I'll make good use of the clothes, too.”
“Pardon?”
“What?”
“D-do I just leave now?”
“What else? Want me to put you up for the night, too?”
“N-no, sir! Thank you!”
“I'm the one who should be thanking you.”
Kim Junyong gave a cheerful farewell and walked into the apartment complex. A woman in a tracksuit followed beside him.
Sergeant Kim Sangsu watched Remi go with a wistful expression.
“Ah, this isn't the time.”
The sergeant quickly called the higher-ups.
[Hey! Sangsu! Are you all right?]
“Yes, I'm fine. I've just parted ways with Kim Junyong and Remi.”
[Who's Remi?]
“You know, the swordswoman in the school uniform.”
[That monster of a bitch! Anyway, you're all right?]
“Yes, I'm fine.”
[Good. Get back here. You did a great job!]
“Oh, not at all. I thought I was dead for sure, but all I did was drive.”
[That was the great job!]
They'd managed to locate the fugitive with surprisingly little fuss.
[A surveillance team will be there soon. Return immediately.]
“Yes, sir!”
After hanging up, Sergeant Kim Sangsu let out a long-held sigh.
“Haaa!”
As the tension faded, a sense of longing took its place. The sergeant glanced back at the apartment complex for no real reason.
“Ahh.”
Remi.
I guess I'll never see you again.
* * *
The Special Investigation Unit headquarters was practically a military fortress.
It had three layers of defensive walls and a battalion of troops stationed there on guard. An impregnable fortress where unauthorized people and vehicles couldn't easily pass through, from either inside or outside.
The facility had been built with the fact that all the criminals it handled were hunters in mind.
It was impossible for a hunter suspect to escape from here.
It should have been impossible, at least...
“Reporting casualties! One hundred twenty-eight security troops injured, one missing. Thirty-seven hunter agents injured.”
“Deaths?”
“No fatalities.”
“No fatalities?”
“That's correct.”
“Critical injuries?”
“No one has life-threatening injuries.”
“...”
Jin Hojin, commander of the Special Investigation Unit, frowned.
The bastard had held back while escaping.
Even while facing a combined assault from armed elite soldiers and hunters.
“...What's this about someone missing?”
“Sergeant Kim Sangsu, who was guarding the first checkpoint, was taken along with a vehicle.”
“...”
The emergency response meeting fell silent.
“Commander, what should we do?”
“About what?”
“Should we organize a pursuit team?”
Bang!
Commander Jin Hojin slammed a hand on the table.
“And if we send them? Can they arrest him? Can they?”
“...But he's holding a soldier hostage...”
“Enough! Get headquarters back in order first!”
“Yes, understood.”
Jin Hojin buried their head in their hands.
Commander of the Special Investigation Unit was an important enough post to put the next director's position within reach. Yet a disaster like this had to happen now.
“How's the director?”
“Holy spells aren't working. In fact, they only cause the director more pain, so we've suspended treatment.”
“Phew.”
They didn't even know what had hit the director.
The director went into convulsions at so much as the “Kim” in Kim Junyong, so they could only guess that it was some kind of curse.
“Team Leader Cheon.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Put together an emergency team.”
“What will the team's mission be?”
“As of now, we're designating Kim Junyong a villain and placing him under surveillance accordingly.”
“Yes, Commander!”
Villain.
It was an informal term for a criminal the authorities had given up trying to arrest.
Someone too powerful for the government to handle alone, someone whose arrest or killing would cause heavy losses, someone who posed a political risk...
Well-known examples included Im Hajin, leader of the Gangneung rebels, and Dokgojin, who appeared around Daegu Station.
To capture them, the authorities would have to form a team of Grade 1 hunters or invite a national-level hunter, of which Korea had none.
The cost would be enormous, and the risk even greater.
It was the same reason South Korea didn't recognize North Korea as a country but didn't go to war with it either.
If a villain posed a serious threat to the government, the authorities would take the risk and arrest or kill them. Otherwise, as long as both sides respected an unspoken boundary and acted reasonably, they were left alone.
More precisely, a dedicated villain team would watch them, monitor their activities, and gather information. The team collected intelligence and looked for weaknesses so they could act whenever they judged that eliminating the villain was possible.
“Commander, hasn't the other party already made his terms... clear?”
“...For now, just establish his whereabouts.”
“Yes, understood.”
Cheon Yubeom left to put together a surveillance team for “the villain Kim Junyong.”
* * *
“Ugh, I'm exhausted.”
Yu Jia was in her final year of high school.
She'd come home after evening self-study, the inescapable fate of students at Korea's academic high schools.
“I'm starving. Mooom.”
She opened the front door and went inside, but her mother wasn't there to greet her as usual.
“Jia, shh!”
Her younger brother, Yu Jihun, rushed out of his room and held a finger to his lips.
“What? Where's Mom?”
“Keep it down. She's crying.”
“What? Why?”
“Our uncle got arrested.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We don't have an uncle.”
“You know, Mom's brother. The uncle who went missing.”
“Huh?”
It was so out of the blue that Yu Jia frowned deeply.
Thinking back, she remembered her mother sometimes talking about her missing brother when she drank.
“Mom.”
Yu Jia opened the door to the main bedroom. Kim Jangmi sat blankly on the edge of the bed, her eyes swollen.
“You're home, Jia?”
“Jihun was saying something about an uncle. What's going on?”
“Sniff...”
That set her off, and Kim Jangmi burst into tears again.
“Come on, don't cry. Tell me what happened.”
“Seriously, Jia! Quit being such a T-hole.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Mommy, don't cryyy.”
Jihun wrapped his arms around his mother, Mrs. Kim Jangmi, and mother and son clung to each other, sobbing.
“Haah, we need to know what's going on if we're going to help.”
“Jia, the thing is...”
Kim Jangmi told her everything that had happened earlier that evening. Yu Jia summed it all up at once.
“So you found your missing brother, but he was in a holding cell? For a murder case, no less, and then the Bureau took him away?”
“Y-yes. What should we do?”
“What else? If he committed a crime, he has to be punished.”
“Come on, Jia! She said he was wearing a hospital gown. I bet he was locked up in some mental hospital even though he didn't belong there. This murder case smells like a setup, too.”
“Now you're writing fiction.”
Despite her sigh, Yu Jia tried to think.
She'd never met this uncle. She felt no attachment to him, and he was practically a stranger. Still, seeing her mother so upset hurt her, too.
“Shouldn't we hire a lawyer first?”
“Don't you know you can't hire a lawyer for a Bureau case?”
“No, I don't.”
For an ordinary student like Yu Jia, hunters belonged to a distant world. It was different for people like her younger brother, who dreamed of being part of that world.
“I think we should tell the media.”
“The media?”
“If we can make it public, they won't be able to treat him too harshly, right?”
Had her younger brother's idea sounded convincing?
The look in Mrs. Kim Jangmi's eyes changed.
“I should go protest, at least!”
“Mom, it's past eleven!”
“No. Do you think I could get any sleep just sitting here?”
As if in a trance, Kim Jangmi found her coat and put it on. Jia and Jihun tried to stop her in alarm.
“Mom, come on!”
“If you're going, at least wait until the sun's up tomorrow.”
While they argued, the doorbell rang in the living room.
Ding-dong!
“Ah, it must be the downstairs neighbors again. I'll get it.”
The sensitive neighbors downstairs sometimes complained about noise.
It was nearly midnight, so their complaints were understandable.
Click.
“Yes, I'm sor... Who are you?”
Kim Jangmi's eyes widened at the man and woman standing outside the door.
The man was as scruffy as someone living on the streets, while the woman was so beautiful she made people's heads turn.
“Oh! Junyooong!”
Mrs. Kim Jangmi, who had followed along to the entryway, spotted Junyong and rushed over to hug him, half sobbing and half making a fuss.
Yu Jia and Yu Jihun looked at each other.
‘That's our uncle?’
Footnotes:
“T-hole” plays on the MBTI “Thinking” preference, often jokingly associated with bluntness and a lack of sympathy. Jihun's Korean insult combines “T” with profanity.
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